My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Friday, August 10, 2012

Irwin Cotler's letter to the IOC....

Montréal. Thursday, August 9, 2012.

Count Dr. Jacques Rogge

President

International Olympic Committee

Château de Vidy

C.P. 356 – CH-1007

Lausanne, Switzerland

Dear Doctor Rogge:

I
am writing you as a Member of the Canadian Parliament and mover of a
parliamentary motion which was unanimously passed by the Canadian House
of Commons on June 13, 2012. The motion, which called for a moment of
silence at the 2012 London Olympics in memory of those Israeli Olympians
killed 40 years ago – where you yourself were an Olympic athlete - read
as follows:

That
the House offers its support for a moment of silence to be held at the
2012 London Olympics in memory of those killed 40 years ago in the
tragic terrorist events of the 1972 Munich Olympics wherein 11 Israeli
athletes were murdered.

Indeed, civil society groups, Parliaments and political leaders around
the world have been calling on the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
to hold a moment of silence at the London Games, with the Canadian
Parliament the first to unanimously support this call – an expression of
our responsibility to remember – le devoir de mémoire.

Nor is such a memorial, as you best know, without precedent. Two years
ago during the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, the IOC, observed a
moment of silence – over which you presided, appropriately enough – in
memory of the Georgian athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died
tragically in a training accident. Ten years ago, in 2002, the IOC
memorialized the victims of 9/11, though that terrorist atrocity neither
occurred during the Olympic Games nor had any connection to them. The
duty of remembrance was justification enough.

In
particular, after eschewing a memorial for the murdered Israeli
athletes and coaches at this year’s opening ceremony, the IOC then – and
again, rightly – memorialized the victims of the 2005 London Bombings
(as it happens, I was in London at the time visiting as Minister of
Justice), though this terrorist atrocity, as well, had no nexus to the
Olympic Games.

The refusal of the IOC, therefore, to observe a moment of silence on the
40th anniversary of the Munich massacre – the slaughter of 11 Israeli
athletes and coaches for no other reason than that they were Israelis
and Jews – is as offensive as it is incomprehensible. These eleven (11)
Israeli Olympians were part of the Olympic family, they were murdered as
members of the Olympic family, they should be remembered by the Olympic
family at these Olympic Games themselves.

This steadfast reluctance not only ignores – but mocks – the calls for a
moment of silence by Government leaders, including US President Barack
Obama, Australian PM Julia Gillard, Canadian Foreign Minister John
Baird, and most recently by his Excellency the Canadian Governor General
David Johnston; the calls by various Parliaments including resolutions
by the US Congress as well as by Canadian, Australian, German, Italian
and UK Parliamentarians; and the sustained international public
campaign and anguished civil society appeals.

As well, the IOC decision ignores that the Munich massacre occurred at the Olympic games not par hasard,
but precisely because the Olympic games provided a venue of
international resonance for such an attack; the decision ignores that,
as Der Spiegel put it, the killings were facilitated by the
criminal negligence and indifference of Olympic security officials
themselves; and finally, and most disturbingly, it ignores and mocks the
plaintive pleas – and pain and suffering – of the families and loved
ones, for whom the remembrance of these last forty years is an
over-riding personal and moral imperative, as expressed to you yet again
in London this week.

Accordingly, it is not hard to infer – as many have done - that not only
were the athletes killed because they were Israeli and Jewish, but that
the moment of silence is being denied them also because they are
Israeli and Jewish. Professor Deborah Lipstadt – a distinguished
historian of antisemitism and one normally understated in her
attribution of anti-Jewish or anti-Israel motifs - makes the connection.
In her words:

“The IOC’s explanation is nothing more than a pathetic excuse. The
athletes who were murdered were from Israel and were Jews—that is why
they aren’t being remembered. … This was the greatest tragedy to ever
occur during the Olympic Games. Yet the IOC has made it quite clear that
these victims are not worth 60 seconds. Imagine for a moment that these
athletes had been from the United States, Canada, Australia, or even
Germany No one would think twice about commemorating them. But these
athletes came from a country and a people who somehow deserve to be
victims. Their lost lives are apparently not worth a minute.”

As Ankie Spitzer, widow of the murdered Andre Spitzer put it,
regretfully, “I can only come to one conclusion or explanation: This is
discrimination. I have never used that word in 40 years, but the victims
had the wrong religions, they came from the wrong country.”

Dr. Rogge, you, as a bearer of memory as a Belgian Olympian yourself in
the 1972 Munich Games, have poignantly remarked just days ago, “the
Munich attack cast terrorism's dark shadow on the Olympic Games. It was a
direct assault on the core values of the Olympic movement.”

This Sunday, when the London 2012 Olympic Games conclude, let us pause
to remember and recall each of the murdered athletes. Each had a name,
an identity, a family – each person was a universe:

Moshe Weinberg

Yossef Romano

Ze’ev Friedman

David Berger

Yakov Springer

Eliezer Halfin

Yossef Gutfreund

Kehat Shorr

Mark Slavin

Andre Spitzer

Amitzur Shapira

Dr.
Rogge, it is not too late for the IOC to remember these murdered
Olympians as Olympians at the London Olympic Games this Sunday – it is
not too late to be on the right side of history.

4 Comments:

Every once in a while Cotler comes through with sound reasoning. Too bad it will fall on deaf ears. This issue combined with others leaves one with the view that the IOC is at its core a racist organization. That is sad.

Cotler should spend less time doing Jewish stuff and spend more time on issues relevant to all Canadians. I'm tired of these ethnic candidates spending their time on their pet issues that are of interest only to the group to which they belong.

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My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.
I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)